Kids are getting cellphones at a younger and younger age. And they’re not the Nokia’s many of us received as kids, which were only capable of texting and playing Snake, they’re smartphones. Like many parents, Nick Herbert, a dad in the United Kingdom, had a hard time getting his son Ben to text back after he bought him a smartphone.
That’s why Herbert decided to take things into his own hand, and create the RespondASAP app that will lock a child’s phone until they reply.
Herbert explains on the app’s website why he decided to create the app after buying his son a phone.
“However, what I thought was a solution turned into a different problem,” Herbert wrote. “Because the phone was ‘smart,’ he could play games and watch videos on it. So invariably he keeps his phone on silent so I wouldn’t know.”
“As such, when I try and contact him, he rarely answers, either because he doesn’t hear the phone or because (and I’ve finally had to admit this to myself) he may be embarrassed to speak to his dad in front of his friends.”
“There are messaging apps that tell you when a message is delivered and seen, but the point is the message can be ignored or not seen because he didn’t hear it,” Herbert explained. “So ReplyASAP is my solution to this problem.”